Queen returns to court

Aparna Popat, the strokeful nine-time national champion who disappeared from the circuit nearly three years ago, will be seen in action again. She will play the mixed doubles event of the Tata Open that will be held at CCI, Mumbai, from July 1 to 5.

Aparna’s last tournament was the Commonwealth Games in March 2006. By then, the tendonitis in her right wrist was so bad that she could barely train. After the Commonwealth, she kept off the courts for three years; it was only over a month ago that she started playing badminton again.

“I’m not getting back to a competitive level; it’s more for fun,” Aparna told DNA. “It started out as a joke, actually. I’ve never even played mixed doubles at the national level.” She will partner Kerala left-hander Joy Antony at the Tata Open.

Aparna’s last title came at the National Championships in Bangalore in early 2006, when she —despite crippling pain in the wrist — beat an up-and-coming Saina Nehwal against all expectations. After all, Saina had beaten her in the Asian Satellite final at New Delhi in October 2005.

“Right through that nationals, I just prayed that I could complete the tournament,” Aparna said. “The day after the final, I couldn’t even lift the racquet. I played purely on experience... I was playing just 70 per cent of my strokes.”

That took away her biggest weapons. Aparna was renowned as a skilful player with a plentiful choice of strokes that helped her outmaneuver bigger and faster opponents. It was with these skills that she had turned into Indian badminton’s icon for a decade from the mid-90s.

The pain had first started in 2004 and progressively got worse. She played with it for a year and a half — still, apart from one defeat to Saina in 2005; she was unbeatable on the domestic circuit. By 2006, she wasn’t able to do any weight training, and had no strength in her upper body. At the Commonwealth she was a shadow of herself, and was substituted by Saina after a crucial match against England. The young Hyderabadi’s rise has since overshadowed the quiet exit of Aparna from the national scene.

Unlike her compatriots Gopichand, Siddharth Jain and others, she did not take up coaching assignments and did not even attend tournaments in India.

But there were bigger issues than attending tournaments, her wrist pain being one of them. The pain refused to go away even after she quit badminton, and she found even everyday tasks difficult. Staying off the courts was not difficult, she says, “because memories of the injury were painful. It was only when I was in the vicinity of a court that I would think of playing.”

Gradually, just a month-and-a-half ago, she got back to playing, on the Bombay Gymkhana courts. The game has always been dear to her ever since she first turned up at CCI to train under Anil Pradhan, who predicted a bright future for the little girl. It’s CCI once again, but it’s a vastly different Aparna Popat.